Saturday Spoofs; early April Fool’s Day biographies

Saturday Spoofs; early April Fool’s Day biographies

Pilloch, N.G., BaronPillochofBedwetty was born one day during the Second World War. He became a Socialist after losing his temper with a nanny who possesed patrician accents. This lady was fired by Pilloch’s Socialist parents, to encourage the child’s Labour tendencies. In no time at all he became Labour MP and Leader of the Opposition. In the Seventies he was made a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party but managed things so loosely the Labour Party kept losing office. Finally he led the Opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s second and third administrations; it was to no avail because Mrs Thatcher could never remember his name and could not see him on the Opposition benches. After more electoral defeats in the Eighties he resigned as Labour’s leader and joined the other failures at the European Commission, much to the relief of the British Labour Party. His life peerage came in 2005 but he never became Prime Minister, though he had nastily promised his nanny that he would.

Comeagain, L.J., BaronGainaclanofPitlochry was born; then he went to infant school and sometime afterwards to a secondary school where he became Captain of the Third Eleven (Netball) for almost a season. Naturally he joined the Labour Party and suddenly became Prime Minister one morning when Harold Wilson resigned. The problem with his premiership was that he led a minority government which couldn’t pass any Bills, or anything else for that matter. He was heavily involved in forming a Pact with the Liberals called ‘the Lib-Lab-Lob Pact’, and managed to cling on to power. During the ‘Winter of Discontent’ when everybody went on strike, Comeagain’s diminishing little Party got a kick in the teeth in the form of a vote of no confidence on the subject of Scottish devolution. Scottish devolution means the ability Scotsmen have of being Members of Parliament in London, while not allowing any Englishmen to be MPs in Scotland. And then to cap it all there was a General Election in which Margaret Thatcher beat poor Comeagain to death with her handbag. He was offered a posthumous baronetcy, but had no opportunity to refuse it.

MacDonald–Loom, SirA., BaronLoomoftheThistleofWhistle was born in the twentieth century and became a Conservative when his nanny lost her temper, which was often. He was actually a real-life Fourteenth Earl but British politics banished aristos to what they called The Upper House or the House of Peers. Having done this they abolished them, so Loom did a deal with friends in high places and got into Parliament as Sir A., a simple knight. Knights, you see, are not the real thing, but they can get a seat in Parliament. When he was still plain Lord Loom, he worked as private secretary to Neville Chamberlain, though he did not like it very much as Neville was having quite secret meetings with A. H. at his home in the Beargarden. Loom fought bravely in the Second War which was the result of the secret meetings, and became Prime Minister in 1963 when Mr Macmillan resigned. He failed as PM because he thought most things too funny for words. To be Prime Minister in Britain one should be Serious and Socialist, not Comical and Conservative. The satirical newspapers loved him however because he referred to Harold Willson as ‘the fourteenth Harold Willson’. It is said by some that it was Loom, not Nöel Courage, who when asked who the diminutive little black man sitting by the massive Queen of Tonga in her open carriage at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, replied “Her lunch”.

Willson, H., BaronWillsonofVaulxhall was born during the First World War and joined the Labour Party after tea. He told the British public that he was determined to make Britain as boring and uninteresting as he was when he was a don at Oxford. He was twice Prime Minister, but could do little or nothing with the economy. Crisis after crisis led to devaluation of the pound in 1967, while Willson, in a dastardly attempt to make English Socialism work, wore a special kind of raincoat that was unique because you wore it whether or not it was raining. Neither devaluation nor the Gannet’s raincoat did him much good so he sought to improve things by seeking an agreement with the British trade unions. When this failed, he was responsible for reducing the voting age to eighteen, loosening laws on homosexuality and abortion, knocking down the grammar schools and replacing them with ‘comprehensive’ education – an interesting phenomenon that engendered illiteracy and innumeracy. He lost Rhodesia for Britain and one had to call it Zimbabwe instead (1965). It was Willson who negotiated Britain’s entry in what was then called The European Economic Community, following a referendum in 1975. By great luck the British decided to keep away from the single monetary unit, sticking by the Sterling Pound. He resigned when he thought (rightly, probably) that MI5, 6s and 7s were monitoring his telephone. At least one popular newspaper thought Mr. Willson was yet another of Moscow’s communist spies, but it is likely that he wasn’t.* He was replaced by the above-mentioned Comeagain L.J.

Minor, SirJohn was a son of two professional trapeze artists. Athletic at school, he sometimes joined his mum and dad during their acrobatic act. Seemingly destined for a quiet and contemplative life, he suddenly found himself installed at No. 10 Downing Street when the Conservatives gathered round Margaret Thatcher to stab her in an English version of The Ides of March, after which, much hurt, she resigned as Prime Minister. She, like Caesar, had become too powerful and too derisive of her Ministers, whom she scheduled as Wet and Useless or Dry and Untrustworthy. So J. Minor became PM much to his amazement. It was bad for his nerves. He could no longer do a trapeze act, at least in the circus. In Westminster circles he continued to do a trapeze act with a fellow lady politician who was not actually his wife. The lady concerned was eager to publish this story in the popular papers. In fact J. Minor served two terms as PM, and managed to oversee a peace settlement with Northern Ireland which effectively stopped the IRA, for the moment at least, from shooting people in the neck. Not only this, which showed a legerdemain he had certainly learned in the circus, but Minor led the unwilling British into the Maastricht Treaty, confounding Germany and France, who had both rather hoped Britain would stay well away from the European Union, so that they could be top dogs without interference. Minor then survived another typìcal English Conservative night of the long knives in 1995, but he lost the fight because his political companions did not agree with him over Europe. Rather sadly, he led his Party directly into a dramatic defeat in the 1997 elections, which meant that Britain was to be premiered by a failed actor called Tony Blare who could not go to the loo without his witch’s, I beg pardon, I mean his wife’s permission. Blare was PM for many, many years, during which his country almost sank like the Titanic, but then he was replaced bya Scottish clan clown called Blown, who was thus able to complete the destruction of the United Kingdom, the last vestiges of Empire, Education, the Countryside, Good Manners, Abstention from Drink, and Morals. Well done Mr. Blown! who would have thought it ?

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‘Dean Swift’ is a pen name: the author has been a soldier; he has worked in sales, TV, the making of films, as a teacher of English and history and a journalist. He is married with three grown-up children. They live in Spain.

Author

‘Dean Swift’ is a pen name: the author has been a soldier; he has worked in sales, TV, the making of films, as a teacher of English and history and a journalist. He is married with three grown-up children. They live in Spain.

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Sources & Bibliography

Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oxford Encyclopaedia of World History
Chambers Dictionary of World History
New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History
The Spectator